


They Met On Tatooine

by YamiXenara



Series: The Spellwound Order [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: A little bit of violence, Ages changed, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Blasting through Phantom Menace, First Meetings, Foreshadowing, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Honestly not really enough for T but gird your ratings, M/M, Magic, Purple Prose, Runes, Setting up Plot Points, Visions, starwars just with magic instead of the force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:27:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26156500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YamiXenara/pseuds/YamiXenara
Summary: (”Anakin Skywalker, meet Obi-Wan Kenobi.” A handshake, a single stretch of a moment where Obi-Wan KenobiSees. Seesand knows and feels. This boy will be the death of him. This boy would be his reason- for living for dying for bleeding and crying and laughing and hiding.)Everything Begins on Tatooine.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker
Series: The Spellwound Order [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1899223
Comments: 9
Kudos: 52





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The Prequel to my first story on Ao3. I suck at characterization, which is the reason I don't write fanfiction, so apologies in advance for any OOCness you read. Can be a standalone, probably works better if you read A Thrice Bound Ring.
> 
> I am well aware of my failures as a writer - oocness, purple prose, grammar problems, tenses. All the good stuff, that being said I welcome constructive criticism!
> 
> I really need to stop with this weird-ass 3rd person omniscient POV. Mostly just some extra background for this verse- I swear I'll get better at this eventually lol ;o; anyway if you want to see anything specific pop up here gimme a comment and I'll see if I can swing it (deception arc anyone?)

They first met on Tatooine, Anakin a born slave with marks etched in desperation on his chest. The lines novice but firm and strong, so very strong with the power that ran through their kind’s veins. It was a rune carved into the chest of a child by a mother desperate to save her son, so full of love they shimmered when the light of Tatooine’s twin binary suns caught their edges. It didn’t matter that these marks didn’t appear in any of the ancient books, didn’t matter that they were not taught but were felt and dreamt and created. They sang of hope. They sang of safety. They also sung of deception and hide and don’t see me I’m not here. It’s for that reason no one knew of Shmi Skywalker’s innate talent until years later, after Raiders and pain and death; until it was too late. Regardless, they first met on Tatooine.

Anakin was 14 and brilliant and a slave. Anakin was 14 and brilliant and a person. He shone like a star, like a sun, like a boy who was half made of magic and light and the world danced around him as he ran. Qui-Gon knew he was something else the second he laid eyes on him, a star hidden in a junk shop owned ( _but can one truly own a creature like him_ ) by a Toydarian named Watto etching circles in circles in circles that made things _work_. 

( _”Are you an Angel?”_

_“What?”_

_“An angel. I've heard the sands and the winds talk about them. They live on the moons of Iego, I think. They're the most beautiful creatures in the universe.”_

_“You’re a funny little boy. How do you know so much?”_

_“I hear stories, from the sandstorms and the coming rains. The circles in the circles and the suns that speak. Everything talks if you know how to listen. One day I’ll make a door, a door to elsewhere, and I’ll leave here. Someday I’ll leave this place.”_ )

Anakin, the boy who could make a podracer out of junk and dreams and hope. Marks, unlike any Qui-Gon, had ever learned ( _Ever seen, just will and a binding and a catalyst. No language or meaning, none of the carefully crafted almost mathematic precision formed from millennia of study. Just Anakin and his carvings._ ) holding pieces of metal together where the boy couldn’t weld, substituting power couplings and cords with magic and _will_. It was terrifying. 

He won the Boonta Eve Classic (and his freedom), not because of his racing skills (although he was skilled at flying, that was without doubt), but because he wished too. So it was.  
They met on Tatooine, Obi-Wan Kenobi 20 years old, and still a Journeyman. Apprenticed under Mentor Qui-Gon Jinn, a maverick Chloromancer skilled in ritualism and rites, yet not for much longer. Qui-Gon was already planning to petition the Council to trial Obi-Wan for Mastery, for he was made for so much more than what Qui-Gon could teach him. 

( _Obi-Wan didn’t necessarily want to be apprenticed under Qui-Gon. Yes, he was a skilled diplomat, but he was a Chloromancer and an outlier. Obi-Wan wanted someone skilled in the Arcane Arts that made sense, that had rules and structures and he could understand… not plants._

 _There are certain branches of magic that will never make sense to Obi-Wan. The form their magic takes is elusive and strange to the boy who saw Runes and Understood. He’d never make a flower bloom, nor heal an injured friend. He didn’t, couldn’t, understand the twisting nebulous nature of the darker arts – necromancy, blood magic, or subjection- and so they never could enthrall him. But he understood the lines, the math, the steps. It was however ironically, Divination, the most nebulous of all that came most naturally to him._ )

They met on Tatooine after Obi-Wan spent hours trying to compare blurry holoscans of strange almost primal runes against the surgically precise runes he knew and _failing_. For once not immediately understanding the strange language they spoke – it was like trying to compare Basic and Huttese. He didn’t know where Qui-Gon found them, but he’d do anything to just understand…

They met fleeing a Blood Mage on a ship that had been fixed, a young Queen (so young, too young) less than a room away. The stars blaze and flare and die. A black and red Zabrak stalking the shifting sands below. Blood in his mouth and blood on his hands. A creeping rot begins to stir thousands of lightyears away as a man’s throat is slit in his sleep and the darkness begins to bleed and bleed - 

( _”Anakin Skywalker, meet Obi-Wan Kenobi.” A handshake, a single stretch of a moment where Obi-Wan Kenobi **Sees. Sees** and knows and feels. This boy will be the death of him. This boy would be his reason- for living for dying for bleeding and crying and laughing and hiding. This boy a friend, a brother, an enemy, a lover. A thousand futures, a thousand wishes. I hate you! and I love you. You were my brother and I want you much it hurts… One future old and gnarled by the blinding glare of two unforgiving suns and grief-struck so deeply into bone that the pain will never wash out and a future where two men stand overlooking a nebula laden horizon and stand hand in hand love in their eyes and on their lips and a future… “Hi, pleased to meet you!” and Obi-Wan forgets what he **Saw** as their hands slide apart, grin fixed to his face and dimples showing his genuine pleasure at meeting someone so bright from somewhere so hostile. Six years apart, but a whole lifetime of separate experiences, and a ripped dirty book full of flimsy and runes so unlike anything Obi-Wan would ever Know_). 

They will fly away and face a dark user on Naboo. A blockade will fall, a Trade Federation to blame. Obi-Wan’s power is in his runes, for protection and strength; two locking circles with spiderweb crosses and delicate loops. For speed and agility; a circle in a triangle, thick lines, and heavy swirls. Obi-Wan’s power is in his runes, but he is not helpless without them. Qui-Gon will fall (but he won’t die - his apprentice’s runes block the sword that tries to pierce him through. They don’t stop the corruption of the blood that wastes away his legs, he’ll never train another apprentice), tossed back behind blinding red ray shields. He’s forced to watch as Obi-Wan ducks and weaves and dances around every swing of the Blood Mage’s sword – knowing that a single nick of the blade will corrode his flesh. Obi-Wan doesn’t cut the Zabrak in half – an Order Mage only ever carries a staff – he _burns him alive_. A half twist of a hand, the clench of his fingers, a muffled hiss of _ignis_ , and flames consume them both. But where Obi-Wan had runes to protect him, the Zabrak ( _Maul, his name forgotten, his mind twisted by the dark compulsions of subjection dies afraid and alone. The air in his lungs burns. His hatred of the creature who made him burns even brighter._ ) 

The Order doesn’t turn away older students, only those who have used the dark for their own gain. They meet young Skywalker and see him as other, but they don’t cast him out (however that doesn’t mean they ever fully accept him either). Their criticisms are of his learnings; he was a slave boy can he read? Does he understand? How has his upbringing affected his power? (His runes are wrong; his teachers will cut him down and remake his work into something they understand. He learns to hate all runework not by his Mentor) Qui-Gon says he will teach the boy himself, bedridden and weak the Councillors shake their heads (Obi-Wan stands beside him, looking down at the kid who burnt so bright. Why does he need to know how to read? He thinks. When the boy creates his own meaning with every line regardless.) and the Order swears the boy to peace. 

“We are peacekeepers young Skywalker; swear you will do no harm to those who cannot defend themselves against your power. Swear to uphold the laws and goodwill of the Republic.” A swear, a promise. The Chancellor smiles at the boy who saved his home-world, (whose power burns so bright… what would it looked like converted? How dark an abyss would that light become when it implodes? After all, it takes a star to create a black hole...) and praises his dedication to the Order, to the Republic. He’ll be watching closely, why don’t you come to visit young Skywalker?

( _5 years later and the Galaxy is at war. What use are promises of peace in a universe like that? Anakin can’t keep it, not when the people he loves are at risk._ ) Obi-Wan becomes a Mentor to a boy so far beyond his understanding it hurts. His mastery grows with every newly learned spell, his bond with Anakin grows with every little kindness. (He never learns the young man he trains was once a slave. Not until it’s too late. Anakin never tells, Qui-Gon neglects to mention. It leads to the only failure of consequence years later. The fate of Shmi Skywalker. That, however, is another story altogether.)

They first met on Tatooine, and everything changed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not an artist, or at least NOT a good one, but occasionally I sketch something up and want to share it- this is one of those sketches. One day... one day I'll be an adequate enough artist to actually art something up but till then...


End file.
